Spökenkieker

I think the Amiga Game FATE:Gates of Dawn would make a good episode, as it is a game with a lot going on. FATE:Gates of Dawn started development in 1986 by a guy called Olaf Patzenhauer and was released in 1991 by the German game development studio reLINE Software and is a gigantic Dungeon Crawler RPG. 11 races, 32 character classes, over 200 magic spells, 15 guilds to join, a huge overworld with 4 big cities, over 200 islands, nine dungeons, day and night cycle, different types of weather and a BANKING SYSTEM. Think Elder Scrolls three years before the first Elder Scrolls Game even existed and one year before Ultima Underworld came out. The Game has a protagonist in the form of record shop owner Winwood, who gets teleported into the World of FATE and has to find his way back to Earth. Along the way Winwood can recruit NPCs and control of up to four different groups with 7 characters in each of them. This is needed because some of the dungeons in the game have puzzles that require more than one groups of characters to be solved. So FATE:Gates of Dawn is a huge game, a playthrough even with a walkthrough takes up to 70 hours of game time and in the past one man even archieved a World Record by continously playing it for 170 hours straight. Many people have tried to conquer this game and they failed. Olaf Patzenhauer was also a fan of anime and the art style of the game is his attempt to mix the Western RPG art style of the time with anime. This is propably also the reason why the game has a lot of nudity in the German version that was censored in the English release.

In the beginning the Game presents itself like it wants to be some kind of Survival Horror FPS with Stealth elements set in Colonial times. You get the crappy weapons of that period, combat is short, brutal and you have to ambush enemies to not get killed. There is a Red Riding Hood type of Character watching you from afar and you have a little bit of resource management. All in all pretty cool and good first impression. Then after the first zone the Game sadly devolves into Theme Park MMO style quest grinding, because you always keep doing the same kind of tasks in each location and the Story/Atmosphere isn't strong enough to make you ignore this and if you think to power through it just to see where the Story goes, the combat will stop you cold in your tracks as it requires patience. I rate it: Doubt